KitKats, choucroute, and gobstoppers

• Now politics is back, I have noticed a change in the demeanour of some MPs.

A few months ago they were shocked and stunned by the expenses business, and were in full sackcloth-and-ashes, self-abnegating, miserable mode. Now they are angry.

I've had two conversations lately with MPs who are simply furious with what has happened, furious with the media, outraged that they have been the subject of so much scorn.

Their line is that the great majority of their colleagues are honest, that their expenses are entirely justified ("do you pay for the cost of your office? Does your company expect you to pay your own hotel bills?").

In particular they feel the media has delightedly and hypocritically made them appear far worse than they are.

One MP had done a turn on the radio, and had been interviewed by some idiot, who banged on endlessly about a KitKat he had claimed on expenses. His explanation, that it was a gift to a work-experience researcher who had just spent months slaving away for nothing, was simply ignored as the interviewer persisted in demanding answers to crispy-chocolate-gate. I have more sympathy than you might think.

• We are just back from a holiday in Alsace – lovely countryside, some of the most beautiful villages in France, friendly people, fabulous wines, and for the first week, perfect weather. But for a Brit, Europe is now not just a bit pricey but eye-wateringly expensive. You wander round a supermarket saying: "What? £11 for six beefburgers?" Or, "do you realise they're asking £1.80 for that cauliflower?"

Thanks to our government's handling of the economy, we can now realise what it must be like to visit Britain from eastern Europe. You go up to some cosy-looking local auberge and check out the carte. "Nous vous proposons notre formule, entrée et plat, €19" (£17.43) or "côte de veau garnie, €22" and you think, heavens, that's more than you would pay at a fancy restaurant in the West End of London. We did a wine-tasting at one of the leading wine houses in Eguisheim, and the vigneron revealed that at least some of their wines cost less retail in the UK than they were charging at their own cellars – they have to cut prices because otherwise the market might be lost.

• Actually, food in France is often a disappointment these days. One reason is the curse of regional cuisine. In parts of southern France they assume that tourists only want to lunch on confit de canard or cassoulet, followed at dinner by a choice of cassoulet or confit de canard. In Alsace they eat choucroute, sliced white cabbage, cooked in spices and the local wine, then served up with meat. A lot of meat.

In north-eastern France, nobody is excused choucroute. The farmer's wife who owned our gîte said that her mother made it; would we like some? Nine euros. We assumed that meant €9 for a pile of cabbage; in fact it meant €9 per head for a gigantic crock containing several pounds of cabbage, topped by half a dozen Strasbourg sausages, great chunks of other sausage, smoked ham, unsmoked ham, belly pork, steak.

It seemed a bit expensive at nearly £50 for six, but by the time we had worked our way through it, nearly a week later, we reckoned it had provided 29 meals. In Strasbourg we checked out a restaurant that specialised in choucroute ‑ normal, large, and "choucroute formidable, avec 10 espèces de viande". No thanks.

• Our nearest simple country restaurant wanted only £24 for a three-course meal, which is cheap these days. They offered "civet de biche" and we asked le patron what that was. He looked blank, and replied in French: "What can I say? It is a civet, of biche."

It turned out to resemble a pleasant if unexceptional beef stew with noodles. But when we got back to a dictionary we found it was made out of doe. Bambi casserole! And there they were, frolicking in a paddock outside. No wonder it was still on the set menu a week later. You can get a lot of set meals out of a single fawn.

• Just before we left I got an email from a friend of a friend called Guy Boursot, who in spite of his name is British. Would we like to call in at his shop, 15 minutes south of Calais? Guy had been a wine merchant in Wiltshire, but discovered that customers were coming to his shop to taste, say, champagne for a daughter's wedding, then going across the Channel to buy the stuff.

He hated the big booze hypermarkets near the port, selling vile wines at £2.99 a bottle, so decided to set up a quieter, smaller, pleasanter shop in the pretty town of Ardres. We tried his wines over pate and cheese, and very agreeable they were too – with not a shaven-headed yob tottering under the weight of 144 beer cans to be seen.

• I was abroad when Keith Waterhouse died. I admired him so much that for years I avoided meeting him, fearing that he might not match up to my ideal. When I did, he turned out to be delightful, as witty in life as he was in print, a permanent twinkle of mischief in his eyes. He was a constant reminder of the inspirational power of champagne.

Some of his finest writing was about the north; to him Leeds was as magical and as romantic as any city in the world. Not an easy notion to convey, but he managed it. At one time Roy Hattersley was himself trying to get into the misty-eyed nostalgic northern market, and I was present at a Punch party when the two of them carved it all up, like Spain and Portugal splitting South America. Waterhouse finally ended the conversation by saying magisterially: "I am keeping trams. I invented trams. You," he boomed, "can have gobstoppers."